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Science Sunday #52

In roughly the time it takes for light to get from the Sun to the Earth, astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson explains how the Universe evolved from the Big Bang to us safely ensconced here on Earth. Courtesy of Minute Physics.

Chocolate and A Fib

Chocolate not only tastes good, but you may need to indulge in its pleasures to avoid or reduce the effects of atrial fibrillation.

Tis The Season

The Summer Solstice moment, the beginning of Summer, is nearly upon us, coming early in the morning of June 21st in sunny old England and late in the previous day in toddling Chicago, where I live.

The Summer Solstice is marked by being the day with the most sunshine for us northern hemispherians. In Chicago, at roughly 42 degrees north latitude, we will enjoy 15 hrs and 14 minutes of Mr. Sunshine.

Londoners by contrast will enjoy 1 hr and 23 minutes more of direct sunshine, because London is nearly 10 latitude degrees farther north than Chicago.

Chicagoans get a “free” additional 68 minutes of indirect lighting (civil twilight) every day of the year, with half of that time in the morning (dawn) and half of it in the evening (dusk). Londoners receive an astounding additional 95 minutes of indirect lighting, again because they are 10 latitude degrees farther north than Chicago.

It is fun to observe the shadows cast by street sign poles on the “longest day”. Here is Chicago, the shadow will be a little more than 35 degrees south of east at sunset.

V Sauce Michael above talks at length at issues regarding time and our planet’s motion relative to the Sun in the video above.

The deeper they live. I speak of deep sea gigantism, aka abyssal gigantism, the tendency of sea dwelling invertebrates to grow larger the deeper in the oceans they live. Examples abound: the giant isopod, the giant amphipod, the Japanese spider crab, the giant oarfish, the deepwater stingray, the seven-arm octopus, and a number of squid species including the colossal squid (up to 14 m in length) and the giant squid (up to 13 m).

No one knows for sure why there is this tendency, but one speculation is that the larger the body, the lower the skin surface to body mass ratio, an important characteristic for creatures living in very cold water and high hydrostatic pressure, where conversation of body heat is a matter of life and death.

A related rule called Bergmann’s rule states that crustaceans tend to be larger the higher in latitude they are observed. A similar rule applying to humans called Allen’s rule is supported by observation that indigenous people living at higher latitudes have shorter limbs.

For a more general review of the mysteries of the barely explored deep ocean, check out this fascinating video:

Schlieren Imaging

There’s an old type of dimly lit photography (and videography) called shlieren imaging that reveals the subtle differences in densities (and refractive indices) of moving fluids, like hot air ascending from a burning match, or the ejecta from your mouth and nose when you sneeze. Veritasium’s video above is a great take on this cool optical phenomenon.

A team of Chinese scientists have realized the satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs over 1,200 kilometers. The photon pairs were demonstrated to be still entangled after travelling long distances.

The experiment shows quantum entanglement, described by Albert Einstein as a “spooky action”, still exists at such a distance.

This satellite-based technology opens up bright prospects for both practical quantum communications and fundamental quantum optics experiments at distances previously inaccessible on the ground, said Pan Jianwei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The achievement was made with the world’s first quantum satellite, Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS); also dubbed Micius, launched by China on August 16, 2016, and was published as a cover article in the latest issue of academic journal Science.

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in quantum physics, which is so confounding that Albert Einstein described it as a “spooky action at a distance” in 1948.

Scientists found that when two entangled particles are separated, one particle can somehow affect the action of the far-off twin instantly.

Scientists liken it to two pieces of paper that are distant from each other: if you write on one, the other immediately shows your writing.

The mystery of quantum entanglement has been puzzling scientists since it was detected.

Quantum physicists have a fundamental interest in distributing entangled particles over increasingly long distances and studying the behavior of entanglement under extreme conditions.

Thanks humphrey. Quantum entanglement is fascinating. Thumb nail version is that two particles are created that have a relationship, but neither have a defined state until at least one is detected. When one is forced into a state by being detected, the other automatically and instantaneously is forced into the other “related” state.

The problem with entanglement is how does the first detected particle tell the other particle what its state must be, if they are separated by such a large distance that the message from the first detected particle would have to be communicated faster than the speed of light in the vacuum, something forbidden by the theory of relativity.

It’s like the particles are separated in regular space, but right next to each other in some other as yet undetected space.

It is so rational, how could anyone not accept this argument and charge off to address the most important issue in the history of earchbounds (Latour’s word for what used to be called humans)

I have heard David say that his 30 years of climate activism has been a failure because he failed to stop the carnage of the earth. He was part of and/or led many successful actions, but the overall trend won the day and continues for the most part and is accelerated with republican rule.

As I am writing this, I wonder if I am forcing these connections, if they are a post-hoc construct that allows me to give a more pleasing answer to why I am both scientist and songwriter. But I have truly come to believe that, in me, science and music are different manifestations of the same need. A central deep desire to create new things – elegant, beautiful, new things. It doesn’t much matter if it’s a scientific discovery, a clinic protocol that makes things easier for patients or a song that tells a human story from a fresh perspective. When it works it feels amazing. Even when it doesn’t work, the journey is always paved with nuggets of enlightenment that feed into future creations.

So what do I do?

I think, at my core, I am a creative, though it would be perplexing to many if I started to describe myself this way. Science and music are the mediums in which I happen to create, undoubtedly an unusual combination. But maybe only because we are relentlessly conditioned, from an early age, to believe we must choose whether we are in the science or the arts camp. People from the “arts camp” routinely tell me they were hopeless at science, sometimes apologetically, sometimes as a badge of honour, a mark of their creativity. Likewise, scientists worry that any proficiency in creativity might be interpreted as a deficiency in objectivity, the bedrock of science. It seems our society has lapsed into considering activity in the sciences and the arts a zero-sum game. It is not.

What would happen if we stopped constraining ourselves and our children in this way? If we embraced and fostered fluid boundaries between the sciences and the arts? If many more people were able to cross freely in and out of both worlds, successfully and unapologetically?